Burning Sky
by Hawkeye116
Summary: The pregnant night will give birth to the bloody morning, and they will shed their childhood in favor of more adult clothing, like the Fire Nation crown, the armor of a Southern Tribe warrior, the solemn clothing of a monk. /PostWar, Zutara, Sp. to 3x13/


A/N: I dunno why I wrote this. I started it around the time I saw the Boiling Rock online, but there's not really any spoilers. It's set in the post-war era, and it's kind of sort of my writing style but I tried something a little different than usual so who knows?

* * *

Burning Sky

* * *

_S__OME__ say the world will end in fire,_

_Some say in ice._

_From what I've tasted of desire_

_I hold with those who favor fire._

_But if it had to perish twice,_

_I think I know enough of hate_

_To know that for destruction ice_

_Is also great_

_And would suffice._

-Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice," December 1920

* * *

She leans back into the soft grass. It tickles the back of her neck, and she smiles arbitrarily, secretively, like she knows something no one else does. The air is warm but not unpleasantly so; the cool night sky, littered with victorious stars, cradles her and the grass in its delicate hands, old but smooth. With her own hands folded behind her head and her feet crossed, she stares up, and lights are flashing, exploding in hundreds of colors.

"What are you laughing about?" he asks her. She shakes her head, amused, and says nothing. Something in this temperate, clear night makes her giddy and light-hearted, as if the past three seasons have passed without trouble. Yet another explosion rocks the sky, sizzling, popping, crackling merrily with celebration. Wild shouts and cheers echo from the city in the valley, about a twenty-minute walk from their current position.

He smiles in her direction weakly, and turns his eyes back up to the burning sky. Here, separate from the wild revelry, she is childish and young, frivolous and not at all her normal punctual self. He senses the same compassion, the same care, but he feels none of the pain and the anger typically harbored behind the dark complexion. It is, he thinks, like we are children again. Though he did not know her as a child, he can read her well, by her movements—her body language is so expressive—and by her emotional eyes and the contortions of her face. She radiates a peculiar innocence in this moment that he associates only with Aang, childlike amazement racing across her features as a particularly splendid firework lights up the sky overhead. She laughs lightly, to herself, about nominal unknown things, and her ridiculous joy is enough to fill the both of them.

Though the sky is pulsing, though the air is warm, though night is alive, he can barely stand it. Tomorrow the reparations start—tomorrow the wild celebration will be forgotten, disregarded as raw and savage. They will have to negotiate, argue, plead. And then they will condemn each other. The pregnant night will give birth to the bloody morning, and they will remember the pain and shed their childhood in favor of more adult clothing, like the Fire Nation crown and the armor of the Southern Tribe's warriors and the solemn clothing of a devout monk.

His fist tightens, and Aang gives him a concerned look. Aang is to his left; Zuko lies between the Avatar and Katara. He idly wonders if it has always been destined this way, or if he has erringly interrupted destiny somehow. Either way, what is, is what is.

Aang exudes happiness mingled with disappointment, his eyes laced with weariness at their corners. The Avatar is, Zuko muses, not innocent anymore. He is grown. He is whole, and wholesomeness never came at such a devastating price.

Zuko's eyes leave Aang's, turning their golden irises up to the sky. His eyes smolder, then steam, then flood over silently without flowing over his eyelids.

This fleeting, fragile peace can never, never last.

* * *

She falls asleep and she dreams, so seemingly fragile and beautiful, like a newborn child, an essence of purity and innocence. She dreams of pleasant old days, when the most aggravating thing was the prospect of washing a pair of dirty socks. That time, when she snuggled herself in a warm parka and rosy cheeks, when she went penguin sledding with Sokka. When she grew up just a bit, and was delivering babies with flushed skin and happy blue eyes; when her father left, and she cared for Gran-Gran and Sokka and the Tribe.

Maybe even those hard times were joyous days. She had thought she had become an adult early, fully-grown and fully capable. She had thought she knew the horrors of war and the pain of loss.

She awakens, and it is still dark, some time in the very late night or the very early morning. They are still lying in the grass, and the sky is still clear, and the night is still warm, the fireflies still floating lazily through the air, but Katara feels wrong. She recalls her dream, and her past naivety _sickens_ her.

Despite her better judgment, she gains the harsh ability to, Spirits forbid, _tearbend_. Madness, to be remembering something so foolish at a time like this. But the image stays in her mind and she is half crying, half laughing, and absolutely crazy. Growing up, she thinks, does that to you.

Even after all this pain, though, she wouldn't ever go back to the days before, not even if she even had the chance.

* * *

When Zuko sees her the next morning, the Katara he knows is back: the one with the pain behind her eyes and the heaviness weighing down her heart, only evident through the slight hunch in her shoulders, hiding like a scared child behind a façade of enthusiasm. There's simply so much to be done today, and she's apparently just remembered this truth.

"We should get to the capital before lunch," he advises dutifully to no one in particular. Toph grumbles and turns over in the grass, holding one hand up to shield her face from the hot rays of early morning sunlight. She acknowledges Zuko with a fake glance (the death glare of a blind girl) and then falls back into the ground and turns in the other direction. Sokka takes note of her actions through the corner of his eye and whole-heartedly agrees: He gives a weak thumbs-up to Zuko before squeezing his eyelids together and faking a snore while Suki comes over and peers accusingly at his sleeping form.

Katara nods at Zuko, feebly nudging Sokka with her foot before gathering some food strapped to Appa's back. She sets up a pile of sticks and looks wordlessly at Zuko. He glances from her tired face to the pile of sticks, shrugs, and lights a fire. Breakfast always did taste better out on the open road than in the confines of the imprisoning Fire Palace.

* * *

Formulating a peace agreement is more difficult than Aang ever imagined. All sides have formed a hesitant trust, but everyone still suspects each other. As the Avatar, it is his job to act as mediator for the four—_three_—nations.

"I trust the Prince because the Avatar does," asserts Chief Arnook, "But preventive measures must be taken to stop other Firebenders from rising up and fighting again. The army must be dissolved."

"Yes, and the colonies must immediately be put back under Earth Nation jurisdiction," orders the Earth King. Since his journey, he has grown from his foolish old self into a stern leader for his people. "It would make Bosco very happy if he could roam the west coast freely."

Well, Aang supposes, the Earth King is still the old Earth King when it comes to his most loyal subject, that animal anomaly called a 'bear.'

"Avatar?" questions Hakoda. Aang shakes his head, drawn back to the situation at hand.

"Uh, yes?"

"Do you agree with the Chief's and the King's demands?"

Aang shifts uncomfortably, clinging desperately to his staff. Some of those nuts in the hidden snack compartment would be quite handy right now, just to offer refreshment, just to relieve tension.

He turns his eyes questioningly to Zuko, who has remained steadfastly quiet throughout the whole half hour discussion. Even quieter behind Zuko sits Katara and Toph. Sokka and Suki are elsewhere, with important matters to take care—Aang flushes briefly because he thinks he knows what some of those important matters entail—and he instinctively looks straight at Katara. She casts her eyes to the floor. It has been difficult, these past few days. He is unsure if he still loves her or not, if he _can_ still love her—he has regained the Avatar Spirit, but icannot recall if he ever gave up his love.

She gives no answer. Her eyes are sad and uncertain, and she looks as old as Zuko if not older, maybe as old as Bumi.

"Avatar?"

His eyes slide to the floor. In three words, he condemns the future of the Fire Nation to hard times and a poor economy. What's an Avatar to do when no one trusts the Fire Nation? "Yes. I agree."

He wants to cry, but he can't do that because he's the Avatar. He's the world: conflicted and broken and trying to make sense of the last century.

He feels a hand squeeze his shoulder, comforting, brotherly, affectionate. Consoling. The hand's so pale it appears sickly, but that hand is the hand that taught him _fire_ and _passion_ and _cruelty_ and _compellation_—it is white but might as well be burned black with sin and scrubbed clean and raw with harsh redemption.

Aang studies his own hands, the blue arrows pointing out past his fingertips to some unknown. Unbidden and unintended, he brings his fists together as in his meditation pose to gain access to the Avatar Spirit. He is somewhat baffled when he realizes that both arrows on both hands point to his heart.

Even as a child, destiny had always pointed towards his own heart and he hadn't even known.

* * *

When she was a child, she always fantasized about the man she'd marry. He'd be strong and tall, bringing in fish by the canoeful, gifting her small treats and protecting their children. He'd be the protector, the provider, the dutiful husband—and while she hates the suffocating role of housewife, she always imagined herself as genuinely happy once she settled down.

Now, as a young adult, that essence of safety emanates from elsewhere—from the shorter and younger and more foolish boy who's yet lived a century longer than her. He's not ideal, not what she dreamed of. Adulthood has scratched her childhood dream and frayed its edges, and nothing fits into her little box of a world like it should. Age had disoriented her; experience had set her into frenzy.

Through all this chaos and anarchy, how is she supposed to find a center to anchor onto to? Where is she supposed to find an answer that isn't predetermined for her and that she can't really decide for herself?

Maybe in the disarray that is coming-of-age, a person realizes that living and being alive are two different things, and that _alive_ lies not in the protector but in the passionate; not in the traditional but in the new and strange; not in the safe but in the tenuous; not in the automatically assumed who expects reciprocation but in the quietly willing who waits for something that might never come.

Even in the disjointed and disfigured mar of Zuko's heart, there might be a quiet place where she can rest. Not to rest to forget, but to renew. To rebirth, to reincarnate.

To live again, this time knowing that the world isn't the fantasy that appears in her dreams.

* * *

Zuko cannot pinpoint the exact moment when he left boyhood—was it at fourteen, after the final separation from an already separated family? Was it sixteen, when he learned love for his Uncle? Was it seventeen, when he finally chose right?

Or was it all of those, each a gradual step into a different kind of adulthood?

In any case, he is now certain that he is an adult. He is a leader. He is Fire Lord. He is ready for the world's condemnations. He is ready to be sent to hell for his country's sins.

He is ready to accept the dysfunctional reality of life, and roll with it. That's the best he can do—ask any more, and you ask the implausible. It's highly implausible to demand someone to understand that life is hideous and beautiful at the same time, but Zuko can do just that—he understands, and acknowledges, and moves on. A blackened heart is not a sour and unforgiving one—he knows that _safety_ and _security_ are important for survival and contentment, and ultimately it might be better than love's romantic, romanticized appeal and its forever-doomed outcome.

And yet she comes. Perhaps she is not lacking in safety, perhaps she can handle the hurricane swirling around them as they stand in the pressure-filled yet peaceful eye of the storm.

"I came to say," she begins softly, wispy like a feather but heavy like an old heart, "that I want to stay."

He says nothing but offers her his hand, standing in the very place where both his cursed grandfathers once stood arguing over world conquest, framed by the high red tiers of the palace layered over a bloody but beautiful sunset.

He can't promise her the world, but he won't deny her it either. It might not be unification, but it might be coexistence. And that is just fine for him.

They're not children anymore. They're not so naïve as to believe that everything will work out perfectly for them.

Instead, all they can do is hope for the best and live on in that uncertain land the learned call "future."


End file.
